This lesson is part of the free email course.

Welcome to the first lesson of Clarity in Academic Writing. Today we'll discuss what the reader expects from your text and how you can make it easy to read.

Writing is a conversation​

where the writers talk and the readers listen.

The trouble is, when writers don't write clearly (which happens to all of us), the reader can't ask for clarification.

And they can get confused.

Communication is interpretation and everyone interprets things differently. The more ambiguous a sentence, the more likely a reader will interpret it differently than you intended.

So how can we know what a reader needs?​

We can figure out what a reader needs by looking at how readers read.

Readers don't actually read the words on the page to know what is coming next. They subconsciously predict the words that they are most likely to see next based on what they have read just before.

If their predictions are correct, then readers continue to read and the text has flow.

If their predictions are incorrect, then readers have to stop reading. They feel confused; they wonder where they went wrong. They have to go back and re-read the last part to try to figure out what they missed.

Readers are not consciously aware that they are constantly predicting what will come next. They do, however, start feeling uncomfortable when the words that come next don't follow their subconscious predictions. 

They may stop reading, feel confused or disoriented, or feel like the text is heavy and complicated and hard to read.

When a text follows readers´ subconscious predictions, it feels easy to read, so the readers can focus fully on the content.

What readers expect​

Fortunately, all human readers have the same expectations. We expect consistency, simplicity, and clarity.

Readers expect​

• parallelism

• familiar information at the beginning of the sentence (in the topic position)

• new information at the end of the sentence (in the stress position)

• the verb to show the action

• the subject and verb to be close together

The way you structure your sentences can affect how the reader interprets them and thus what you are actually communicating. Knowing what the reader expects at any given moment will allow you to present information in the order the reader expects to see it and thereby gain some control over how the reader interprets it.

In the coming lessons, we'll go over each expectation one by one and you'll discover how your sentences can be clearly structured and unambiguous. You'll learn the trick to creating flow and to writing efficient, impactful sentences.

Until tomorrow!

“Remember your readers probably know less than you do about what you are asking them to read, and you must be clearer than you think you need to be.” (Williams, Style & Grace)